QLRS: On the Subject of Race

Tue, 31 Jul 2012
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Malay Sketches by Alfian Sa'at

My review of Alfian Sa’at’s Malay Sketches is now up on the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS).

On the Subject of Race
Alfian Sa’at sketches what it is like to be Malay in Singapore

 

Henry   Do you know what you can say? To a black man. On the subject of race.
Charles   “Nothing.”
Henry   That is correct.

– David Mamet, Race, Samuel French: New York, 2010.

 

Two years ago, a couple of friends and I watched the premiere of Charged by Chong Tze Chien, a play with a National Service setting that explores tensions between the Malay and Chinese communities in Singapore.

Those I watched the play with were ethnic Chinese Singaporean, English-educated professionals with an upper-middle/lower-upper class background. I am an ethnically mixed (Chinese-Indian), English-educated professional with a middle-class background.

When the play ended, I exited the theatre with this unspoken sentiment: This was a great play that more ethnic Chinese Singaporean people need to watch so that they know how minorities in Singapore feel. And true enough, my friends had this to say collectively when we discussed the production over drinks: This was a great play – and we didn’t know Singaporean Malays felt that way.

 
(continued…)

Art and vision

Thu, 31 May 2012
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You can be an artist only if you have that singularity and vision, that obsession and determination. If you are willing to compromise, in particular, be willing to be told what to do by market forces or by people who filter information and manipulate your talent, you’re not really an artist, you are a work for hire.

— Bob Ezrin, quoted in “Too busy for Jagger” by Eddino Abdul Hadi in The Straits Times: Life!, 23 May 2012, p. C10.

Also, see “Leadership (Part II)” and watch a very brilliant commencement address delivered by Neil Gaiman.

Piglet race.

Mon, 24 Oct 2011
2 min read
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LOOKIT THESE PIGLETS FLY!

NOTE: I was contemplating publishing this in the school newsletter, but I decided this was the better platform.

The poem stems from something I’ve been thinking about for a while, because I’ve wanted to find a way to thank my students and wish them well.

I started writing the poem last week in the midst of marking and all that jazz, but I’ve decided that the poem is done and it’s time to put it up.

Last but not least, “piglet” and other porcine-related words are figurative and not literal, and is in no way meant to demean or denigrate – I thought I had better make this clear, just in case, and I apologise if I inadvertently offend anyone.

—

Piglet Race
By Laremy Lee

For all my piglet children.

I see you all bounding toward me
with the innocence of bacon,
the look in your eyes squealing:
in another life, I could’ve been char siew.

Your heads held up in earnest,
your snouts pointed to the sky,
you radiate pink with promise and youth
as you race toward the future, on a path

you’ve often been prodded along.
Remember, though, before I let you go:
life must be as easy as a piglet race
but not as simple as one.

Fly like the wind. Leap
as high as you can, over
hurdles set out like nets.
Look cute while doing so.

But wait for fellow piglets if
they pause. Help them if they falter.
We are as much competitors
as we are comrades-in-trotters.

Fortunately (or unfortunately),
like Fleance, you will soon flee
leaving me behind as Time flies
to pick my pocket once again,

as it did me when I was a piglet like you;
as it will you when you are a boar like me.
Another set of piglets will round the bend,
bounding toward me with all their might,

even going so far as to – who knows? –
one day, also bound toward you,
till your heart beams and your smile says,
“That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”